July 17, 2012

I have written before about running as a metaphor for the Christian life -- mostly about my feeling that I am not striving hard enough. I was thinking about it on Saturday morning, when I set out for a run feeling crummy. That's one of the biggest similarities between running and Christian discipline, I think: the way you have to push past the inertia. I've learned that I just have to ignore the discomforts of the first half-mile, and then I'll hit my stride.

On Saturday I was going for distance over speed; my plan was slow and easy. I wound up going 4.5 miles, the furthest I've ever gone. (That sounds kind of pitiful, but there it is.) It was a breakthrough run for me: it felt great. I didn't have to coax myself to keep going; I didn't have to override an inner voice saying "STOOOOOP! For the love of God, stooooooop!" I usually feel good after a run; this was the first time that the during part has felt good too.

And it left me thinking about Christian discipline, about how the real goal is joy. I wrote recently about my fearfulness -- a constant companion. This morning my 7yo interrupted me with a minor question as I was praying and I told him he'd have to wait until I was done. "After growing up in this house, he's going to grow up and marry someone who pushes him away in the interest of faux piety," said the critical voice. "It'll be a lifetime of coming in second. Why couldn't you just get up earlier today so you could pray while he was sleeping?"

I suspect I'll be struggling with the balance for years to come: how hard to push, how much to cut myself some slack. But I want to remember the feel of that last half-mile on Saturday morning -- the certainty that persistence can lead to payoff.

3. As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been doing something completely out of character this summer: I have been going to exercise classes. Strength training on Tuesday, which leaves my arms feeling like defeated jelly, Pilates on Thursday, which leaves my abs feeling like a rhinoceros wallow, and usually one other -- yoga or sometimes Zumba.

After a month, my biceps are still not rippling. This is America! Where is my instant gratification?

4. The classes are in addition to the running group, which continues to be a blast. I am holding steady in the faster half of the second-slowest group. Elwood asked me about moving up to the middle group, but I don't see that happening. I can run at their pace for about half their distance, or I can run their distance at a significantly slower pace, but I can't keep up with them for the whole run. After six years of getting discouraged because I was so slow, or pushing myself to get faster and winding up both discouraged AND injured, it's nice to be hanging out with a group of women who are moving at exactly the same pace. Our group met at the height of the heat wave, and did our thing despite the triple-digit temps. We did it with more walk breaks, and we did it at a slower pace, but it went better than I expected. On my own I would have been thinking "I suck I suck I suck I suck" with every step. When everyone is muddling through together, it's obvious that what sucks is the weather. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we'd covered three miles despite the heat. More distance, less self-loathing: what a combo!

5. My two oldest boys are both out of town this week, and it's funny how the dynamic changes here with them gone. There are some pleasant things about it -- it's easier to find things that everybody enjoys doing when the participants' age range is smaller -- but I miss them. And cooking is much less fun while they're away, because they eat almost anything I put on the table. One of the younger boys celebrated his name day this week. I asked him what he'd like for dinner and he answered instantly: plain spaghetti!

6. I was planning dinner in my head this morning, thinking about how to use up all the produce that's in the fridge. I thought I'd make ratatouille (the zucchini plants are loving this weather), and maybe tapenade with a nice baguette, and maybe a quick stir-fry with the turnips and kohlrabi that we got from the CSA on Tuesday.

If I actually make that dinner, do you know what the three kids at home this week will eat for dinner? Baguette. Plain, thanks.

7. Remember the mystery knit-along that required me to buy more sock yarn? It's a funny phenomenon. Stephen West, a popular designer of shawls and wraps, is releasing a pattern in four stages beginning today. The whole thing will be published next month at a higher price. I'm not quite sure why I pressed the purchase button, since I haven't capered with joy at his earlier designs, but I did. The Ravelry group for the knit-along has been pulsing with anticipation. How's this color combination? When oh when will it be July 13? Even without a picture, people are already saying the design is one of their favorites. I think he could publish a pattern for a garter stitch rectangle and get away with it.

July 10, 2012

Recently I was feeling skeptical about the way that people say "So-and-so gave me a funny look." I thought to myself, "I bet as often as not there's nothing behind that look. Maybe the lookers' contacts are misbehaving. Maybe they're thinking about unrelated annoyances. Maybe the lookees are projecting." Twice in two days, though, I've been the recipient of an unmistakable funny look.

I was at Target yesterday with Pete, whose sandals disintegrated. We went to the spot where sandals used to live, but they've rearranged the store and I don't know where anything is now. The erstwhile shoe aisle is the current home of women's lingerie. Shoes were nowhere in sight. I said, "Gosh, Pete, do you think you could just wrap a sports bra around each foot and call it good?" He laughed, because I have trained him well, but the lady walking past us stopped and turned around. She looked horrified. NB: I have never sent a child out in public wearing women's lingerie.

Tonight I was at Walgreen's, surveying the laxatives. (No, the potty project is not going well. No, I do not want any further opportunities to grow in patience, thank you very much. How can I be so inept at this when it's my fifth time through?) Suddenly, Like the Way I Do came over the speakers. That was The Song from my sophomore year of college, when Elwood dumped me unceremoniously on Valentine's Day. I suspect that if ever I am in the throes of advanced dementia, I'll still be able to sing every word to that song. So I was singing along, just a little bit, there in the laxative aisle, and I might have been moving just a little bit to the music, and I might have had Witch of Endor hair going on, with tendrils flying loose in all directions from a wild ponytail, as I was contemplating the virtues of stimulant vs. osmotic laxatives. A clerk walked by me and looked me up and down, and I suspect she was thinking that perhaps I was in the beginning stages of dementia.

July 05, 2012

Uzzah appeared in today's Office of Readings. I first heard about him from my college pal Dave, who said that the story underscored God's holiness. Uzzah, who had spent his whole life near the ark of the covenant, reached out a hand to steady the ark when the oxen hauling it stumbled. He died on the spot.

Uzzah stresses me out.

I know it's a little silly to stress out over Uzzah. (I have a long history of taking Old Testament characters to heart. Jephthah knocked me into a weeklong funk back in 1992.) But see, if you can spend your whole life around the ark, and be struck down (kerblam!) for a well-intentioned mistake -- well, isn't that a little discouraging?

Jesus, I know, is the answer to that question, because he brought to us the holiness we could not attain on our own.

But.

I still have a hard time with Uzzah.

I've been reading a book called Grace for the Good Girl. It's all about living your life in fear that you won't be loved if you don't perform, which is pretty much my one big capital-F Fear. I am not far enough into the book to know whether the remedies she proposes are workable; I only know that I have wrestled with this one for a long time. (As recorded, in chronological order, here, here, here, and here. I expect there are others as well, but that's probably enough on my tendency to flagellate myself about my self-flagellation.)

Yesterday I went to the gym for a run on the treadmill. A few minutes into the workout, my shoe came untied. I stood on the sides of the machine to get it tied securely, and then I hopped back onto the belt. Or at least my plan was to hop right back on the belt, as I've seen plenty of other people do. What actually happened was that I completely lost my footing. The woman beside me stopped the belt for me, and she was so kind about it. I was mortified, and sore because the belt had left good-sized raw patches on both knees and shins, and for a minute I thought about just taking my keys and slinking out of the building. Instead I got back on the machine and worked out for 30 minutes, but I spent the whole time battling the self-defeating chorus. "Clumsy!" "Awkward!" "I've never seen anyone do that before!" Etc.

It would have been so much easier to offer understanding to a stranger beside me. Of course she could stumble -- everybody stumbles sometimes. Of course she might want to walk away. Good for her, getting right back in there. Can't quite manage to be that understanding with myself, though.

If I let down my guard, if I'm not vigilant about being good enough -- well, look what happened to Uzzah.

July 02, 2012

Recently finished: a baptism gift for my nephew and godson, because every baby needs a wool sweater when it's 100 degrees outside. (It's a size 12mo. Surely it will no longer be 100 degrees in January.) I didn't make my white bobbins quiiiite long enough and wound up duplicate-stitching the last of the sheeps' wool. Let us hope the Knitting Police do not notice their raggedy coiffures.

My 12yo son requested dragon socks, and after contemplating Fair Isle tiny dragons I decided to use somebody else's pattern. "Embroidery!" I thought to myself. "Embroidery is much nicer than intarsia." The Colorado River carved another 10 feet out of the Grand Canyon in the time it took me to finish the embroidery, but they're done at last and they got a big thumbs-up.

I bought some carrot-orange lace yarn on clearance at Knitpicks, and then I wondered what had possessed me. When I saw the spring issue of Knitty I knew exactly what to do with it: the Good Day Sunshine scarf. I mean shawlette. I have this shawl resistance, because part of me thinks shawls are for elderly ladies who drink Ovaltine and collect bric-a-brac. I have fought back against the bric-a-brac by not knitting shawls. (Those two things are totally connected.)

Anyway, this design was a ton of fun. I had long feared lace that required me to work in pattern on both sides, but it turns out that a friendly little cable on the purl row breaks up the monotony of endless purl rows and is not exactly taxing. This project also taught me, at long last, how to cable without a cable needle. I plan to wear it bib-style and not cape-style because all the hip non-elderly ladies are wearing bibs this year. The picture shows it in its post-aggressive-blocking state; it has since relaxed so that no one will be injured on one of the points.

This week I am working away on a Monteagle Bag, inspired by all the pretty baskets and reusable bags I have been seeing at the Tuesday evening CSA pickups. (Which are fun, by the way -- there's a nice playground nearby and the families who pick up their veggies sit and chat.) I was going to make it out of linen yarn, but my attempts to wind the linen yarn resulted in ugly yarn barf. There is a Ravelry group -- can you even believe this? -- of people who love to untangle other people's yarn barf. They are, like, bummed out if they miss a chance to debarf some yarn. Still blows my mind, because I haaaaaate debarfing. So I am sending my linen yarn off to a lady in Michigan who promises to send it back with 100% less barfiness, and making a cotton/modal Monteagle bag instead. Pictures to follow when it looks like something besides a big tangle. I'm glad I'm practicing on the cheap yarn, because the Knitting Police might have some comments on my first attempt if they were not imaginary.

And finally, I hope to finish Space Invaders socks for Alex this week. One is finished, and I am millimetering my way down the cuff of the second. Turns out that a 92-stitch cast-on makes for slow sock progress. But he thinks they're awesome, and it's not all that often that a 15yo is that enthusiastic about his mother's handiwork. So I won't complain.

July 01, 2012

It's July! Halfway through the year, a third of the way through the summer.

In January I resolved that I was going to take better care of my body. It's been a great summer on that front: I've been exercising six days a week and enjoying it, and I've been eating vegetables like nobody's business. I've been more energetic and happy too. Here's to more of the same.

I also said I wanted to work on an evening routine that would include nightly inbox-busting. SIGH. Should it encourage me that there are only eleven emails in my inbox right now? that our family dinners are much happier than they used to be? (I should write a post about that, actually.) But we still don't have a consistent family prayer time after dinner, and I'd like to be less hit-or-miss with baths and less distracted by screens in the evenings. Even with my veggie-fueled get-up-and-go, I'm still ready for quiet by 7:00.

I was going to spend 15 minutes a day beautifying my home and 15 minutes a day on pictures. Those things keep getting written down on to-do lists and they keep not happening. I think I know what my deal is with the pictures: it feels too huge for 15 minutes. I think I'm going to do a picture blitz this week. I'm going to submit an article for publication tomorrow (go me! also, wish me luck because I'm aiming high!) and on Tuesday I'm going to request a bunch of articles to update a lit review. For the rest of the week, while I'm waiting for articles to trickle in, I will use my work time to power through pictures. Maybe I can get through 9 months' worth of pictures by next Sunday? I suppose I'll never know if I don't give it a shot.

Still not sure why I'm not making progress on the home front. I have paint for making an ugly maroon hanging rack into a cheery pumpkin orange rack. I have pretty green calico for replacing the hideous curtain at the back door. I have a box and a face plate so I can rewire the outlet where my sewing machine lives, theoretically making it easy for me to whip up pretty curtains. Maybe I can get those three things done this week. Maybe. Maybe I can also think about what my deal is with this one.

I envisioned this year as a year of finishing things, and you know, I'm getting there. (I have already exceeded my projected yarn budget for the year, but I had a niece and a nephew born in January who did not have a single hand-knit sweater between them -- clearly a reason to adjust the yarn budget. ...And there was also that impulsive decision to join the Stephen West summer mystery knit-along, for which none of my stashed sock yarn was quite right...and that other impulsive decision to try out the linen yarn I'd had an eye on for years.... Okay. Yarn budget, take two.) I'm also kerpowing my way through the TBR pile, including the Kindle backlog. Haven't yet picked a new ten-year project, though. I think I'll knock out the rest of Eliot, which won't take long (in ten-year project terms, at least), and test the waters with Trollope, who seems like he might be up my alley. Or maybe Thackeray?

The summer plans are going reasonably well too. Our picnic dinner has happened three weeks out of four, which is good enough for me. I can't seem to get to both daily Mass and an Adoration hour each week, but I'm managing one or the other. I made profiteroles for Alex's half-birthday dinner, botching both the choux pastry (slightly soggy in the middle) and the crème pâtissière (too runny, because the last time I made it the eggs coagulated). But what do you know, the kids thought they were made of awesome, with chocolate ganache on top. "Please, Mom," they said breathlessly, "please, will you make these again?" I'll call them a success, even if Julia Child might disagree.